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It’s not every day that you celebrate your 20th anniversary, so let’s all get ready for the Festival des Antipodes!

Since 1999, festival-goers in St-Tropez, based in the picturesque Place des Lices, have had the chance to meet the actor David Wenham (The Lord of the Rings, Top of the Lake), who was our first festival guest along with Nadia Tass (Amy, Malcolm) and Fred Schepisi (Six Degrees of Separation, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith), to rub shoulders with Sam Worthington before Avatar hit the screens, Ben Mendelsohn before Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Miranda Otto (just as nostalgic as her character in The Lord of the Rings), Anthony LaPaglia in the flesh following his stint on Without a Trace, the stunning Radha Mitchell (Woody Allen’s muse in Melinda and Melinda) and, yes, the stars of The Thorn Birds, Bryan Brown and Rachel Ward also came to St-Tropez!

You will also recall the exceptional previews of films such as American Gangster starring Russell Crowe and Phillip Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence, which Michel Rocard told us was the best film he’d seen in ten years! We’ll always remember the powerful and compelling work of filmmakers such as the Maori director of Once Were Warriors, Lee Tamahori, and the current new wave of Australian Aboriginal filmmakers such as Ivan Sen, with Beneath Clouds and Toomelah, Warwick Thornton – who won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes and our Grand Jury Prize for Samson and Delilah in 2009 – and Rachel Perkins, whose film Jasper Jones won our Jury Prize and Audience Award in 2017! Not to mention all the latest features by Jane Campion and Rolf de Heer, as well as a large number of debut films that so clearly highlight the constant renewal of talent in the Australian and New Zealand movie industries. And, since this event is also about encounters, it would be impossible not to mention the many French actors and directors who’ve made the trip to St-Tropez to soak up the (still little-known) cinematic world of the Antipodes. They include Jean-Loup Dabadie, Mareva Galanter, Philippe Caroit, Stéphane Audran, Hervé Claude, David Ginola and Natacha Régnier.

This is because it’s in St-Tropez that you can immerse yourself in the best of cinema from the other side of the planet – without even leaving the historic centre of St-Tropez and its legendary Place des Lices!

Among titles already programmed for this year’s festival are Three Summers, a rollicking comedy that takes us behind the scenes at a zany Western Australian music festival, the fantasy thriller The Changeover by Stuart McKenzie and Miranda Harcourt (who are expected to attend the festival) set in post-earthquake Christchurch, where a young girl must battle a demon that tries to take over the body of her four-year-old brother. David Wenham’s Ellipsis, a film shot in just a few days with an improvised plot, follows the aimless late-night meanderings of two characters in the heart of the fascinating Australian metropolis that is Sydney. In Hunt for the Wilderpeople, we are taken into the magnificent mountainous landscapes of New Zealand in a tender and touching comedy by Taika Waititi. In another vein, Strange Colours by Alena Lodkina is a hypnotic peregrination deep into the Australian bush and its opal mines that touches on the sublime. And, as part of our Antipodes Junior programme, Cousins des Îles will no doubt be highly instructive, with a good dose of humour, refreshing escapism and candid laughter guaranteed.

We’re celebrating our 20th anniversary this year with a focus on New Zealand, featuring titles such as Goodbye Pork Pie by Geoff Murphy, a picaresque car chase at full speed across New Zealand… in a mini! And there’s Pork Pie, a remake of this film made by the director’s son over thirty-five years later! We’ll also be taken into the inner workings of the United Nations with My Year with Helen by Gaylene Preston, which follows the former New Zealand prime minister in her bid to be elected as UN Secretary General. These are just some of the many films to be screened this year, so be sure to schedule in your week of cinema with an Antipodean flavour in sunny St-Tropez!

And, of course, we will be offering spectators the Antipodes Junior section aimed at young audiences, as well as our Short Film Competition, a selection of documentaries such as Life is a Very Strange Thing and Jill Bilcock: Dancing The Invisible, cinema classics including Dogs in Space, a number of films that have never been screened before, the Australian TV series Mystery Road, an excellent exhibition held at the Salle Despas, and a special 20th Anniversary Award!

So, let’s get ready for a journey to the Antipodes in St-Tropez and to make every day a festival of cinema, culture and dialogue across the oceans…